I CAN SMELL A GOAN!

Now to continue on from where I left off on my last post, ‘HEAVEN ON A PLATE’, I still have a few things left to say about the infamous Goan sausages!

One cannot mistake the pungent and garlicy smell of Goan sausages inside departing plane from Goa for Mumbai! In fact, even the international flights departing to the gulf have the same tell-tale signs of sausages onboard! The cabin crew know by now what has been stashed in the overhead baggage compartments.

When I first got out of Goa in 1989 to work in Dubai, 80 percent of my luggage consisted of sausages for all our relatives in Dubai. The rest of the space was mostly occupied by my clothes and these too were stinking of sausage! As I came through customs, I was mortally afraid that my cargo would get binned. Also, I was carrying a couple of liters of ‘Feni’ which was to pass off as home-made vinegar!

To this day, every trip I’ve made to Goa has been like this: I had to return with a minimum of 2000 ‘rosary’ sausages and ‘Urrack’ if the season was right. Gifting Goa sausages to Mangaloreans and Mumbai-Goans is the best thing you can do for a lasting friendship with them. They absolutely love our sausages and would pay any amount to lay their hands on them. Goan restaurants in Dubai will not survive without having dishes like ‘choris-pulao’, ‘sausage chilly fry’ and sorpotel on their menus.

The other day I was given some well packed Goan sausages from Margao by Sheldon, a cousin of ours. Apparently, on the plane, there was a familiar smell of sausages from above his seat and was feeling pretty embarrassed about it, thinking the odor was from his bag. So to confirm his fears, he asked his fellow passenger if he was also getting the smell. Immediately, he blushed and apologized about it and blamed the smell on the packaging. Sheldon released a sigh of relief that it was not his package that was smelling!

For those of you who want to get your sausages and pickles professionally so that you can take them abroad without any trouble, I am told there is a place in Colva that vacuum packs food and labels the pack to make it look like factory packed products. Seems like a good way to lower the stress at customs checkpoints abroad!